Straight to the Heart

Romans 5:1-11

Earlier this week, I was listening to a podcast, where the guest was sharing about the early days of the pandemic, and what life was like. Three weeks, she said, three weeks for our rivers and streams to clear up - even the nastiest and worst polluted ones. Three weeks for the hole in the ozone layer to begin to heal, for the haze and pollution from factories, car, and other human wrought damage to begin to subside. Three weeks, she said, for neighbors to meet neighbors they'd never met before, reach out and re-connect with friends and family who are not a part of everyday life. Three weeks, she said, for the city-dweller to hear the song of the birds in the morning as they woke, to see the streets come together with nature and life other than the cars and buses they designed to carry. Three weeks, she said, for us to find those essential workers - people whose jobs we hold in high regard, like doctors and nurses, and wear them out, letting them take the mental, emotional, and physical stress upon their own bodies. Three weeks, she said, for us to find those essential workers - people whose jobs we need to keep things running - like grocery store, childcare, those who clean and disinfect our spaces, and tell them they have to keep going (but they would have any way, they can't afford not to). Three weeks for those who could to set up home offices, wear pajama (bottoms) to work everyday, balance the stresses and joys of living and working and parenting and being in one space all the time. 

Three weeks, she said, for the natural environment begin to heal, and for society to divide itself. 

In the midst of all this, she noted the peace that she felt at the beginning of everyday, waking up (yes) in the middle of a city, where she'd never heard the birds before, never spent so much time with her amazing spouse, got to know her neighbors and community, and had time for her hobbies.  It was so amazing, and would have been so wonderful...except for the tension in her every breath, not knowing if she had it, was sharing it; knowing that people were dying - healthy people, sick people, young people, older people, friends, strangers.  Knowing only that we were up against an adversary we knew little about, other than we didn't have any defense. 

Yes, it was peace, she said, under the very heavy veil of tension.

Peace. Paul opens our text for today with these words about peace. Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace. Of course, as we learned last week, though, this isn't a passage or a sermon written on its own. Paul, the great Apostle, missionary, converted converter, is writing to a community he has never been to - the only of his letters to a community he did not establish and nurture into being - but longs to visit. Why, we ask? Why does Paul long to visit Rome?

There's a lot of things we don't know about Paul, so it's a wonderful sacred imagination spiritual discipline to dream about who Paul might have been. It's okay, and we need that, otherwise we might not like Paul. The things we do know about him should make us suspicious of him, as his own contemporaries were, as the church in Rome was. Paul was a persecutor of the Christians, a devout protector of a very rigid and literal form of his childhood faith, who claimed to have an experience where he saw Jesus, which only made others more suspicious of him. After his conversion, he began to share about the new way of life with people outside of the covenant, which maybe there were some who thought was okay, who didn't mind, except its Paul. Why would he become so insistent on bringing those gentiles into an already established faith community where no one else really thought they belonged? One could see his traveling as a wonderful calling and gift from God. Or one could read some of these letters and think that Paul is telling others to do what he cannot - to live in community with each other, to lay aside differences, to find that peace with God through Jesus Christ. 

He writes to the church in Rome - why? He longs to be with them - why? As Thomas mentioned last week, and we've mentioned before, we're reading someone else's mail here. There is an element, here, then, of things we will never know or understand, because we aren't living in that time and culture, we don't live in that particular place, and we aren't the ones with (or without) the relationship to fully understand all the dynamics at play. What we do know is that Paul could write, by which I mean he could write and read, physically and intellectually able to do these things, and so we have his letters, and maybe not letters from others who were sharing the gospel. We also know that he writes about himself as a person who was struggled with his past, and the things he'd done, and who struggled with sin and faith and righteousness; who had some pain and suffering, was thrown in jail; who struggled with inclusion and exclusion, and fairness, and how it all worked; and he wrote it all down, beautifully. These words, dear friends, speak to us through the ages, and much of his writing does not need a deep historical-theological exegesis and study of hermeneutics to reach us - because without love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

I really don't understand why he's writing to the church in Rome, why this exception was made for a community that he does not share a close connection with. The only thing that makes sense to me is that Rome is the belly of the beast, the head of the dragon, the heart of the empire. Life in Rome is amazing - really, in all of the Roman empire - as a peaceful city and empire. Pax Romana. Maybe you learned about it in school, I know I did, a long, long time ago. I dust of the cobwebs of a long ago education and remember that life in the Roman empire was good, very good. They had great food, good parties, awesome clothes, and good entertainment. Life for the Roman citizen was good - just not for the average Roman citizen. 

It is out of this Pax Romana that we get Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, a true tale of deceit, treachery, and death; a working class that never gets ahead and lives to serve their masters - yes, slave and servant; a system of violence and oppression where entertainment was to watch troublemakers and political threats and rebels fight each other, lions, or be crucified in the coliseum and the city gates.        

Yes, it was peace, but at what cost?

The Pax Romana was a peace under the veil of oppression and fear of the ruthless, violent, at times turbulent government. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes to the Christian community that lives every day in its shadow. 

Peace. Paul is writing to these early followers of a faith not fully formed to have peace with each other, because they have peace with God. For a people who are living in a place where life is highly structured, and not fair, he writes - you, dear people of God, are now ONE community, made into ONE community by the great power of God in Jesus Christ. These passages we did not read, particularly chapter 3, speak so powerfully about being made right we God, not of our own doing, but because of Christ's act on our behalf - his death so that we might die to sin, and he resurrection so that we might have new life in him - has spoken and inspired believers throughout the ages. It was this chapter - 3 - that we did not read, that inspired the likes of Martin Luther, the great reformer, so that it clicked in his heart and soul that we do not live anymore under the veil of sin and death, but that we are called to live in the peace of God. Radically here, Paul takes away those things that have made us different, from each other, from the rest of society, and says, "You're all the same here, folks.  In this one regard, you are all the same, and it doesn't matter who you are - for those who have believed for their entire lives, and for those who have believed for a day - you are all receivers of this righteousness, a restored relationship with God.

Wow. That's big. I don’t know that we fully understand just how big that is. Have you ever been part of a group or an organization that longs for new members, extends awesome hospitality, and then struggles because they don't know the "way we do things?" Maybe you've been sitting at a meeting when a new attender throws out an idea that is so - well - unheard of and different that they clearly don't know the history of the organization, and why things are done the way they are? I'm going to be honest with you this morning and tell you that in my 20 years of ordained service to the church, I have seen my fair share of this. So much so that I really thought it was only the church that struggled with it. Of course, the church is NOT the only place that struggles, I'm seeing it now in every aspect of life, every time someone new is introduced as a potential in-law or step-relative, every time a new class of students enters a school, every time a new coach brings their coaching staff, every time a company is bought out or merged. 

I remember, several years ago now, when I first met our friend Adam White. Maybe you know Adam - he has served as the pastor to the Lutheran Center at UNL for most of his career, is a graduate of Hastings College, and is now moving to Minnesota to serve in congregational ministries. Anyway, I remember the first time I met him, and we took our staff (at the time) on a tour of the old Lutheran Center building. He shared with us his vision for the community he served, and how the building (at the time) was not serving the community well. When he showed us the worship space, I asked a whole bunch of questions about worship, and leadership, and Adam gently and excitedly shared this truth about working with college students - every four years, the entirety of the community he served was completely different. He knew, 100% that every four years, none of the members would be the same. The mentality of the community then, was this - how we will worship God today as a community? What gifts and talents do we bring, and how can we share them? Some years, he said, it meant worship with more traditional instruments, and songs out of a hymnal. Some years, he said, it meant more contemplative practices and less singing. Some years, he said, it meant praising God with harp, guitar, flute, and violin. Some years, he said, it means worshipping with drums and guitar. 

What freedom, there is, dear friends, in this! As we continue, unfortunately, to be in the fits and throws of what can and can't be safely done, I would urge us all to have an awareness that we are all, here today, the church gathered to worship. And yes, some of us are new, and some of us - aren't; some of us are tired, and some of us have energy; some of us long to return to the way things have been done, and some of us only know what is currently being done; and some of us are in person, and some of us are online or on the phone; and some of us are this, and some of us are that. I would offer for us this morning that we are not serving the church, or each other, or the God with whom we are made right through Jesus Christ, if we did not continuously go back to that cornerstone of faith that Paul shares - that we have all received righteousness by the life and death of Jesus, and new life in the resurrection of Jesus. 

This, dear friends, peace under the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It's the Amazing Grace of God, in the old, familiar tune, and in a completely new way, as well.  Amen.

Rev. Dr. Melodie Jones Pointon